The broad bean is Vicia faba, one of the first crops. I guess new world beans belong to Phaseolus sp. Both genera are unrelated. In fact Vicia is paraphyletic in respect to Pisum, Lens and Lathyrus. Its "sister" genus may be Trifolium (clovers), but phylogenies are not very robust in the Viciae tribe.

The tree of life web project has detailed entries on legumes, thanks to Martin Wojciechowski, the authority.

Background: The remarkable mutualistic associations between termites and protists are in large part responsible for the evolutionary success of these eusocial insects. It is unknown when this symbiosis was first established, but the present study shows that fossil termite protists existed in the Mesozoic.

Conclusion: This represents the earliest fossil record of mutualism between microorganisms and animals and the first descriptions of protists from a fossil termite. Discovering the same orders, families and possibly genera of protists that occur today in Early Cretaceous kalotermitids shows considerable behaviour and morphological stability of both host and protists. The possible significance of protist cysts associated with the fossil termite is discussed in regards the possibility that coprophagy, as well as proctodeal trophallaxis, was a method by which some termite protozoa were transferred intrastadially and intergenerationally at this time.

The article is open access.

--------------Church burning ebola boy

FTK: I Didn't answer your questions because it beats the hell out of me.

PaV: I suppose for me to be pried away from what I do to focus long and hard on that particular problem would take, quite honestly, hundreds of thousands of dollars to begin to pique my interest.

A perduring object, or species, thus threatens to disintegrate into a series of theoretically infinitely thin time-slices, i.e., fleeting Whiteheadian ?occasions? (Whitehead 1979) that are spatio-temporally located parts of processes whose moment ?of becoming is also their moment of perishing? such that they themselves neither change nor move (Sherburne 1966, pp. 210, 222).

So a species is a quantum waveform in a four dimensional space? Such that taking one kind of measurement makes look like a single thing, but another type of measurement makes it look like a wave that's spread out in several directions? Also with the problem that the act of trying to measure it causes uncertainty in the result. :lol:

I am not sure that the wild ancestor of pea is extinct. I thought it was Pisum fulvum.

But the wild ancestor of broad bean, which is as old as cultivated pea, is unknown/extinct.

You could be right about the pea. It is a long time since I've done any reading on the topic and I don't have my material on the subject handy.

Regarding New World vs Old World beans; faba beans (=broad beans, horse beans) and of course soya beans are Old World species and Phaseolus is a New World group (mainly Central/South America). There was a lot of work studying the origins of Phaseolus beans and things may have changed, but many beans are regarded as one species - green, wax, white, haricot, navy, black, black-eyed, pinto and kidney beans. Lima/butter beans are different and so are runner beans - but still Phaseolus.

It's interesting to think about what food plants people did not have available. I've tried one or two of the traditional leafy vegetables that fell out of favour and it's easy to tell why they were dropped.

I know you guys tend more towards the biological sciences, but since Creationists think evolution covers the Big Bang and is pretty much the Theory of Everything (evil), I thought I would share this item from the good Dr Phil's Bad Astronomy blog. It is a video of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy rising over the Texas Star Party.

It was taken with a Canon EOS-5D with filter modifications to record hydrogen alpha at 656 nm. An EF 15mm f/2.8 lens was used, and the exposures were controlled by a timer, 20 seconds of exposure followed by 40 seconds off.

The results are spectacular. I've seen the Milky Way under really dark skies, but it was nothing quite like this!

--------------"[A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd."- Richard P. Feynman

A perduring object, or species, thus threatens to disintegrate into a series of theoretically infinitely thin time-slices, i.e., fleeting Whiteheadian ?occasions? (Whitehead 1979) that are spatio-temporally located parts of processes whose moment ?of becoming is also their moment of perishing? such that they themselves neither change nor move (Sherburne 1966, pp. 210, 222).

So a species is a quantum waveform in a four dimensional space? Such that taking one kind of measurement makes look like a single thing, but another type of measurement makes it look like a wave that's spread out in several directions? Also with the problem that the act of trying to measure it causes uncertainty in the result. :lol:

I know you guys tend more towards the biological sciences, but since Creationists think evolution covers the Big Bang and is pretty much the Theory of Everything (evil), I thought I would share this item from the good Dr Phil's Bad Astronomy blog. †It is a video of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy rising over the Texas Star Party.

It was taken with a Canon EOS-5D with filter modifications to record hydrogen alpha at 656 nm. †An EF 15mm f/2.8 lens was used, and the exposures were controlled by a timer, 20 seconds of exposure followed by 40 seconds off.

The results are spectacular. †I've seen the Milky Way under really dark skies, but it was nothing quite like this!

I'm looking for just such a filter for my new Canon EOS Rebel XS. I'm trying to avoid the duct tape route, but hey, a man's gotta do...

ETA: Near as I can tell to this point, there's no front end filter to just screw on, it requires serious surgery on the camera. I'd like to avoid that, too.

Edited by Lou FCD on May 28 2009,20:26

--------------Lou FCD is still in school, so we should only count him as a baby biologist. -carlsonjok -deprecatedI think I might love you. Don't tell Deadman -Wolfhound

ETA: Near as I can tell to this point, there's no front end filter to just screw on, it requires serious surgery on the camera. I'd like to avoid that, too.

That's the impression I had from the description. Not something that I would want to do to my camera.

--------------"[A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd."- Richard P. Feynman

If this is the procedure I think it is, it consists of removing the factory installed IR filter in front of the CMOS sensor, and replacing it with clear to improve sensitivity. It does require surgery inside the camera and is a bit of a delicate operation.

Canon made a series of 20Ds that never had the filter installed for a while, but they were discontinued.

--------------To rebut creationism you pretty much have to be a biologist, chemist, geologist, philosopher, lawyer and historian all rolled into one. While to advocate creationism, you just have to be an idiot. -- tommorris

I am not sure that the wild ancestor of pea is extinct. I thought it was Pisum fulvum.

But the wild ancestor of broad bean, which is as old as cultivated pea, is unknown/extinct.

You could be right about the pea. It is a long time since I've done any reading on the topic and I don't have my material on the subject handy.

-snip-

I had to attend a meeting at a plant breeding institute a few years ago and was told at the time that the pea was domesticated twice once in the middle east and once in Ethiopia. I got the distinct impression that these were from different species but must admit my memory is rather fuzzy on the detail and I certainly don't have any refs.

In regard to the synthesis of RNA article, I found this comment on the Nature page interesting. † † †

Quote

What is most promising is that it may lead us to be able to show, definitively, that man did not in fact ascend or evolve from apes [as I had always found odd] but rather we evolved along a seperate, but similar strain of the same... for lack of a better term, primordial ooze. Like the other prehistoric beasts, some went inland and some went back to the seas, and others still made for the trees. This is a wonderful study and I hope to read more.

In regard to the synthesis of RNA article, I found this comment on the Nature page interesting. † † † † † † † †

Quote

What is most promising is that it may lead us to be able to show, definitively, that man did not in fact ascend or evolve from apes [as I had always found odd] but rather we evolved along a seperate, but similar strain of the same... for lack of a better term, primordial ooze. Like the other prehistoric beasts, some went inland and some went back to the seas, and others still made for the trees. This is a wonderful study and I hope to read more.

WTF? †???

There goes common descent down the drain - or maybe the 'tree of life'?

Our restless species strives ceaselessly to invent ever more useful devices, improve our social systems, and create new works of art. Our creative ability derives from motor and cognitive flexibility that allows us to form a potentially unbounded number of new words and sentences as well as tools, art, dance forms, and music; it is a fundamental defining attribute of Homo sapiens that presumably derives from a suite of neural capabilities absent or greatly reduced in other species. The archaeological record, however, reveals few signs of creativity earlier than not, vert, similar200,000 years ago in Africa, with a burst of creativity appearing in Homo sapiens during the Upper Paleolithic, not, vert, similar50,000 years ago ([Klein, 1999] and McBrearty and Brooks, 2000 S. McBrearty and A.S. Brooks, J. Hum. Evol. 39 (2000), pp. 453Ė563. Abstract | †PDF (2416 K) †| View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (314)[McBrearty and Brooks, 2000]). Something must have modified the brains of our ancestors in that distant time, the period associated with both the appearance of the immediate ancestors of modern humans and the amino acid substitutions that differentiate the human form of the FOXP2 gene from that of chimpanzees. Now, Enard, Paabo and their colleagues shed new light on the role of the FOXP2 gene on the evolution of human language and cognition (Enard et al., 2009).

They report, in this issue, the results of introducing into mice the human version of the Foxp2 gene. The mice exhibited alterations in ultrasonic vocalizations and exploratory behavior as well as changes in brain dopamine concentrations. The neurological consequences provide an explanation for why human speech, language, and cognitive capacity transcend those of living apes, as well as the cognitive abilities of our distant hominid ancestors that can be inferred from the archaeological record. In mice with a ďhumanizedĒ Foxp2 gene, the medium spiny neurons of the basal ganglia show increased synaptic plasticity and dendrite length. Such changes enhance the efficiency of neural cortico-basal ganglia circuits, the brain mechanisms that in humans are known to regulate motor control including speech, word recognition, sentence comprehension, recognition of visual forms, mental arithmetic, and other aspects of cognition (Figure 1).

[....]This brings us to the signal achievements of Enard and his colleagues (Enard et al., 2009). The FOXP2 story started with the discovery of a mutation in this gene in an extended family in the UK that resulted in extreme speech motor-control deficits, deficits in language comprehension, and lower scores on standardized intelligence tests. Neuroimaging studies revealed anomalies in basal ganglia morphology and activity. Embryological studies then showed that both the mouse and human versions of this gene modulate development of the basal ganglia and other subcortical structures. Moreover, the two amino acid substitutions that differentiate the human form of FOXP2 from that of chimpanzees occurred and were fixed within the past 200,000 years, the period associated with the appearance of the immediate ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals. However, it has not been clear whether the behavioral deficits associated with the aberrant missense mutation in the affected family members have any bearing on the effects of the human form of FOXP2 on the brain. With their new study, Enard and coworkers resolve this issue. They demonstrate that the amino acid substitutions that mark the human form of FOXP2 would have played a key role in the evolution of the human brain by increasing synaptic plasticity and dendrite length and connectivity in the basal ganglia.

The proximate ďtinkeringĒ logic of evolution has often been pointed out. In a sense, we can view the effects of the human form of FOXP2 as a sort of ďtuningĒ that brought the cortico-striatal circuits that humans inherited from other species to a state of higher efficiency. Synaptic plasticity is the key to how neurons code and process information. Dendrites connect the neuronal map, channeling information between neurons. Neurophysiological texts contain hundreds of references to studies that note the roles of synaptic plasticity and neuronal connectivity in forming new associations and new action patternsóthe Hebbian (Hebb, 1949) ďcomputationalĒ processes of the brain that appear to underlie virtually all aspects of cognition.

As is the case for all significant discoveries, the new work addresses seemingly unrelated issues and raises further questions. The earliest surviving hominid fossils that could have had tongues capable of producing fully modern speech date back 50,000 years to the Upper Paleolithic (Lieberman and McCarthy, 2007). In earlier Middle Pleistocene fossils, in which the neck segment is equal to the mouth segment, neck lengths were too short to accommodate a human tongue. Tongue proportions that facilitate speech came at the cost of increasing the risk of chokingóthe fourth leading cause of accidental death in the U.S. Therefore, a human tongue would be worse than useless unless the hominid in question also had cortico-basal ganglia circuits capable of executing the rapid, complex motor gestures that are necessary to produce articulate speech. The presence of a human tongue in Upper Paleolithic hominids thus serves as an index for the presence of these neural circuits. But as Enard et al., 2009 W. Enard, S. Gehre, K. Hammerschmidt, S.M. HŲlter, T. Blass, M. Somel, M.K. BrŁckner, C. Schreiweis, C. Winter and R. Sohr et al., Cell (2009) this issue.Enard et al. (2009) show, cortico-basal ganglia circuits could have evolved before the appearance of the modern human tongue, explaining the presence of some Upper Paleolithic artifacts in Africa >50,000 years ago.

Finally, these results argue against Noam Chomsky's views concerning the neural bases of human language. In all versions of Chomskian theory, the central claim is that humans possess a species-specific, innate, neural ďorgan,Ē devoted to language and language alone. Language in Chomsky's theories, moreover, is equated with syntax, the means by which distinctions in meaning are conveyed in a sentence. Cortico-basal ganglia circuits clearly are involved in sentence comprehension, but enhanced human cortico-basal ganglia circuit efficiency clearly would be expressed in cognitive acts beyond language and motor control. With the study by Enard and his colleagues, we have reached a new milestone in the journey toward understanding the evolution of human cognition.

ETA: The original article is open access. If the above link isn't working try this one.

--------------"Random mutations, if they are truly random, will affect, and potentially damage, any aspect of the organism, [...]Thus, a realistic [computer] simulation [of evolution] would allow the program, OS, and hardware to be affected in a random fashion." GilDodgen, Frilly shirt owner

If you want to try something without the cost and modification headaches of the hydrogen alpha filter, just slap a 25A (deep red) filter on your lens and do some time exposures. If that looks like the sort of thing you like, you can decide whether to step up to the hydrogen alpha filter. The 25A will get you much of the benefit of the narrow-band hydrogen alpha filter by dropping out blue and green light contributions. Unless what you are battling is sodium-arc light pollution, it should do a pretty decent job. Drive further out into the country to get away from the light pollution.

The proximate ďtinkeringĒ logic of evolution has often been pointed out. In a sense, we can view the effects of the human form of FOXP2 as a sort of ďtuningĒ that brought the cortico-striatal circuits that humans inherited from other species to a state of higher efficiency.

Hmm, I'm going to have to skim it again. I didn't see "efficiency" the first time through. I'm pretty sure mice had a highly efficient FoxP2 gene and cortical neurons for their niche. If they are less jittery and more thoughtful mice, thay are worse mice, no matter what that tells us about humans.

The proximate ďtinkeringĒ logic of evolution has often been pointed out. In a sense, we can view the effects of the human form of FOXP2 as a sort of ďtuningĒ that brought the cortico-striatal circuits that humans inherited from other species to a state of higher efficiency.

Hmm, I'm going to have to skim it again. I didn't see "efficiency" the first time through. I'm pretty sure mice had a highly efficient FoxP2 gene and cortical neurons for their niche. If they are less jittery and more thoughtful mice, thay are worse mice, no matter what that tells us about humans.

How do you know they are worse mice?

*

* You're right, of course. That's a very anthropocentric view.

--------------"Random mutations, if they are truly random, will affect, and potentially damage, any aspect of the organism, [...]Thus, a realistic [computer] simulation [of evolution] would allow the program, OS, and hardware to be affected in a random fashion." GilDodgen, Frilly shirt owner

If you want to try something without the cost and modification headaches of the hydrogen alpha filter, just slap a 25A (deep red) filter on your lens and do some time exposures. If that looks like the sort of thing you like, you can decide whether to step up to the hydrogen alpha filter. The 25A will get you much of the benefit of the narrow-band hydrogen alpha filter by dropping out blue and green light contributions. Unless what you are battling is sodium-arc light pollution, it should do a pretty decent job. Drive further out into the country to get away from the light pollution.

Thanks, Wesley. I'll give that a go.

--------------Lou FCD is still in school, so we should only count him as a baby biologist. -carlsonjok -deprecatedI think I might love you. Don't tell Deadman -Wolfhound

--------------Given that we are all descended from Adam and Eve...genetic defects as a result of intra-family marriage would not begin to crop up until after the first few dozen generations. - Dr. Hugh Ross

Marin lays out each playerís role and perspective in the controversy, and argues that studying the original interpretations of quantum mechanics can help scientists better understand the theory, and could also be important for the public in general.

I hope the article gets better as I go along.

Unrelated: WTF is up with physicists and hair?

--------------Lou FCD is still in school, so we should only count him as a baby biologist. -carlsonjok -deprecatedI think I might love you. Don't tell Deadman -Wolfhound